Birds

It goes back to my childhood. In the verandah of the old building of the village, two thick wooden beams were hung horizontally on the wall just above the window. It stored our extra mattresses and pillows. Pigeons would come and build their nests and lay eggs on them. I used to get up there from time to time with sheer curiosity and peak at their families. Once I caught a pigeon and built a brick house in a corner of the two-storied open verandah, provided it with a lot of grains, closed the mouth of the house and went to my uncle’s house in Bolpur with my mother. After I was there for two or three days, I remembered that there was no water that I had left in the bird’s house. I wanted to rush back to the village. I had gone to my uncle’s house for seven days, but the little boy’s wishes or whims did not matter. At that time there was no telephone in the house. Seven days later, I returned to the village and found my dear pigeon lying upside down in a small brick house. Apparently, his life was lost by not getting water. I was four or five years old then. I did not forget that day just by crying. That incident made my child-heart very upset. Created a deep wound in my mind. That scene used to chase me when I got up and sat down. Another incident that comes to mind is when I was a student of Kala Bhavan. I was cycling towards Kala Bhavan. A baby bird was lying injured on the road from falling down from a tree in front of Ananda Sadan. Its longing to live resonating in his loud cry with a long neck. As soon as I stopped to look, it tucked its head into its body. I went to the studio and made the Fallen Bird sculpture. While doing the work, the incident of my childhood was also in mind. This is how the Bird Unhonoured sculpture was born one day – which I did with Makrana marble. That incident of my childhood still haunts me. In the death of that little bird, I felt the great suffering of the world’s fauna. Water is the juice of life. I still am engrossed in creating sculptures of those precious lives.